Drescher punctuates the comment with her characteristically nasal, staccato laugh. It's the same piercing laugh that accompanies her all the way to her ATM these days, replacing the snickers one used to hear from people whenever then-CBS Entertainment President Jeff Sagansky would predict "The Nanny" was going to be a hit.

Turns out he was right, so Drescher gets the last "heh, heh, hehhhhh."

"The Nanny" is one of the biggest surprises of the new TV season, its second, winning one of the most competitive time slots in prime time by a margin of nearly 2 million households.

The fish-out-of-water comedy about a woman from Queens who goes to work for a widowed Broadway producer's family now has won its 7 p.m. Monday time slot the last 14 weeks, pummeling NBC's "Fresh Prince of Bel Air," Fox's "Melrose Place" and, in most of the country, ABC's "Coach," which had been a top-10 show. (In the West, of course, "The Nanny" runs against ABC's "Monday Night Football" instead of "Coach," but it holds its own just the same.)

And it has become a magnet for an eclectic group of guests such as Corbin Bernsen, Wallace Shawn, Ben Vereen and Liz Smith.

"The Nanny" has its origins in a trans-Atlantic flight to Paris on which Sagansky found himself trapped in first class with Drescher, whose "Princesses" series had died a quick death on CBS a few weeks before. Drescher planted herself next to her once-and-future boss and whined sweet nothings in his ear.

By the time the plane landed, Drescher and Jacobson had gotten Sagansky-now a top executive at Sony, whose TriStar unit produces "The Nanny"-to agree to hear their pitch when he returned to Los Angeles.

"Jeff is the one who launched the show, and he was very supportive," Drescher said. "But it was Peter (Tortorici, Sagansky's CBS successor) who made the very swift and strategic moves. He was confident it could compete. One of the first things he said when he took over was, `We have to make "The Nanny" the hit it deserves to be.' "

The key was a summer gambit when Tortorici decided to run the show twice a week-both on Wednesdays and as part of the network's traditionally strong Monday lineup.

"Once they put you on Monday nights, it's sink or swim," Drescher said. "But we really wanted to try to be a big fish in a big pond."

The move worked. Viewers liked what they saw, especially the interplay-and sexual tension-between Drescher and Daniel Davis, who plays the producer's butler. So, "The Nanny" got to take up permanent residence on Mondays, where it and "Dave's World" are the only series managing to win their time slots so far this fall for CBS.